


no grave (can hold my body down)

by waterandsilver



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bullying, Childhood Friends, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up Together, Hurt Archie Andrews, Hurt Jughead Jones, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, I swear there is a happy ending, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Injury, M/M, Miscommunication, Physical Abuse, Pining, Pining Jughead Jones, Pre-Canon, Season/Series 01, Self-Esteem Issues, except it's 'every time one of these fools gets hurt and the other patches them up', kind of like a 'five times' fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:41:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23790982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterandsilver/pseuds/waterandsilver
Summary: Jughead has been in love with Archie since he landed him in the emergency room in first grade. But Archie is never gonna want him back - is he?Or, Archie and Jughead's relationship, told through injuries.
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Jughead Jones
Comments: 13
Kudos: 160





	no grave (can hold my body down)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hi, please be sure to read the tags for trigger warnings. In particular, there is a scene in which a character dismisses abuse against themselves. To be clear, abuse is never okay, and Jughead is most definitely an unreliable narrator in this fic. Also, this is not a particularly FP-friendly fic, so if you really like him, you might want to pass.
> 
> Title from Hozier's 'Work Song' (but y'all already knew that, let's be real). Please leave a comment to let me know what you thought, or [come say hi](https://waterandsilver.tumblr.com/) on tumblr <33

When Archie is six, he runs headfirst into a wall and needs nine stitches. Jughead is unscathed, but he wails so hard that the nurses flock to _him_ when they arrive at the hospital, thinking he's the injured one.

“I was chasing Archie,” Jughead sobs, his eyes red and raw and innocent. “I was chasing him and he got hurt.”

“You didn’ mean to,” Archie mumbles. “Wasn’ your fault, Jug.”

But the tears well up like salt lakes in Jughead’s eyes.

The thing is, other kids don’t seem to like Jughead much. He’s either too loud or too quiet. He laughs and cries at the wrong times, and he uses weird words, and he comes to school with his shoes untied so they’re always falling off. Yeah, other kids pretty much avoid him like a bad smell. But Archie has never seemed to care about any of that, and so none of it has ever really mattered. Jughead is all of six years old, and he doesn't know much, but he knows that Archie is his favourite person in the world.

And now Archie has a golf-ball of a lump on his head, because of him, and it feels like the worst kind of betrayal.

“I’ll make it better,” he decides, and he clambers over and kisses Archie’s band-aid, making the nurses coo in chorus.

“Ew.” Archie wrinkles his nose. “You’re gonna give me germs.”

But for the first time since he hit his head, he is smiling. He sidles closer to Jughead, slips their hands together, and it's easy, so easy; they're too young to overthink it.

They both get stickers for being brave. Jughead sticks his to his bedpost, where it stays for years, faded from the sun, until it’s nothing but a misshapen circle and a blurred memory.

When Jughead is eleven, he gets into his first fight.

Riverdale is such a small town that everyone knows each other, but middle school is still a different animal to elementary. Later, after the incident, Archie will claim that the kids were eighth-graders: fourteen-year-olds, tall as the sun, picking on someone younger and smaller than themselves. Cowards. Bullies.

They're walking behind the gym when they get yelled at. Or, more specifically, Jughead gets yelled at, because these kids don’t have any problem with Archie. But they seem to have all kinds of problems with Jughead, judging by the things they’re calling him. What really gets him is when the tallest of the possibly-eighth-graders calls him _dirty_. The older kid has blond hair and shoes so white they could be spray-painted, and all his friends laugh when he says that they should all stay away from Jughead, because he’s definitely got lice from living in that dirty little trailer.

The words paralyse Jughead. He stands there, frozen to the spot, cheeks flaming. He knows that sometimes people don’t like him, sure, but it’s the first time he’s felt _this_ – this slick wave of mortification that rolls over him.

And then the next thing he knows, he’s launching forwards and sinking his fist into the kid’s stomach.

Jughead is small but he’s scrappy. He’s been watching his dad spar with his leather-jacketed friends behind their trailer for years, ever since he was old enough to prop himself up on his elbows at the window. He manages to land a good few kicks on the possibly-eighth-grader’s shins before the older boy's friends recover from their shock and lay into him.

Afterwards, he hurts a lot more than he expected to. His dad always grinned and ruffled his hair the next morning, regardless of how much Jughead saw him getting hit the night before. But Jughead’s wrist hurts from throwing that punch, and his back aches from where one of the older boys kicked him, before Archie managed to grab Jughead and pull him out of there. The hard plastic chairs outside the principal's office certainly don't help; before long, Jughead is sniffing into his sleeve.

“Jug? Are you okay?”

Archie, of course, is sitting beside him. Archie has been told to leave by three different teachers, but he hasn’t, and it’s just about the only thing that’s stopping Jughead from straight up bursting into tears.

Jughead nods, wiping his eyes roughly. But he can never lie to Archie.

“No, you’re not,” says Archie. “What is it?”

“My arm hurts,” Jughead mumbles. “It’s no big deal.”

He shifts in his seat. The eighth-grader’s words have sunk into his skin; he can’t stop thinking about them. They’ve made him feel stained in a way that he can’t shake.

“I shouldn’t have hit that kid,” he mumbles. If he’d just done _nothing_ , he wouldn’t be here.

“But he was being mean to you!” Archie cries indignantly. “They all were. They’re older than us. They should know better. I’m gonna tell the principal so.”

Archie’s ardent defence, however, doesn’t stop the principal from giving Jughead three weeks of detention.

“We won’t be able to go down to the creek,” says Archie, voice tinged with sadness. “We’ll miss the end of maple season.”

It takes Jughead a second to realise what he means. Last fall, they found an abandoned maple tree on the far side of Sweetwater Creek, one that the Blossoms either don’t know or don’t care about. They’re eleven years old and they know exactly jack and shit about tapping maple trees, but the thin metal flutes are already sticking out of the bark, so they figure they just have to wait for it to start weeping. They’ve buried mason jars in the snow, ready to catch the syrup when it comes.

The fact that they won’t be able to see it finished makes Jughead want to cry all over again.

“You can still go,” he points out, blinking hard. “You’re not in detention.”

“I wouldn’t go without you,” says Archie immediately, and those words make flowers bloom in Jughead's chest.

“You could always come to detention with me.”

It’s a joke, but Archie frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Well, nobody is gonna notice someone sneaking _into_ detention, right? They’re only gonna be looking for people trying to sneak out. I bet we could get away with it.”

Archie brightens. “Hey, that’s a good idea! Yeah, I’ll do that.”

“Wait – Archie, I was just kidding. You don’t really want to spend three weeks in detention with me.”

But Archie simply shrugs. “You’d do it for me, right?”

And Jughead has nothing to say to that, because yes, yes he would.

“Does your arm still hurt?”

Archie’s fingers brush his wrist. Jughead doesn’t know why it makes him jump. Him and Archie touch all the time. They’re best friends; it’s no big deal. But for some reason, it’s as if he can feel every atom of Archie’s fingertips where they rest upon his skin. Every groove of his fingerprints. Jughead’s skin is weirdly tingly.

And. Archie’s eyes. Jughead knows that Archie’s eyes are brown; of course he does. But right now, weirdly, he finds that he can’t look away from them. Archie’s irises are gold where they catch the mid-afternoon sunlight, and Jughead sees maple syrup dripping onto fresh snow.

_I wouldn’t go without you._

“No,” he says, “It doesn’t.” Because the ache in his wrist is forgotten. Even the asshole eighth-grader’s taunts are forgotten.

This strange new shifting beneath his ribcage is all that Jughead feels.

When Archie is thirteen, he comes to school with red knuckles and a scowl on his face. Jughead wants to ask, but Archie is in an uncharacteristically sullen mood, staring out of the window all morning, paying no attention in Math or History.

By the time recess rolls around, Jughead can no longer resist his curiosity. He nods at the sore knuckles as he catches the packet of M&Ms that Archie throws to him. (Archie always brings two of every snack to school; one for himself and one for Jughead.)

“Punch a wall or something?”

Jughead is kidding, but Archie’s dark look grows even darker, and he kicks at the dirt beneath his feet.

“Holy shit – you actually _did_? Dude, what happened? I thought I was supposed to be the 'troubled' one.” Some of their teachers seem intent on shoving them into boxes, convinced that Jughead is a bad influence and Archie is an impressionable little wallflower.

“I think my parents are gonna get a divorce.”

Jughead’s grin disappears. “Oh. Shit. I’m sorry.”

Archie sits down heavily on a nearby bench. Jughead sinks down a little awkwardly beside him.

“They keep fighting.” Archie’s shoulders are hunched over, making him look small in a way that Jughead doesn’t like. “Last night, my mom… they shut the kitchen door, but I heard what she said. She said they don’t have a future anymore.”

Jughead bites down on his lip, not knowing what to say. He hates the look on his friend’s face. Archie isn’t meant to look like that – so _lost_. Jughead wishes it were simpler, that it was just someone being an asshole to him, something that Jughead could solve with a hard punch and a week of detention.

“What am I supposed to do, Jug?” Archie sounds as miserable as Jughead has ever heard him. “How do I fix this?”

Jughead’s chest aches with sympathy. He is thirteen, at the height of his Greek mythology phase, and sometimes when he looks at Archie, he sees Atlas trying to hold the whole world up. Archie is definitely going to get one of those Helping People jobs, one day. Like a fireman or a counsellor. (One of the good counsellors. Not the school one who keeps trying to corner Jughead and interrogate him about his “home life”.)

Jughead is less good at the whole selflessness schtick. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say in this situation, so he settles for resting his hand on Archie’s shoulder (that’s what people do in movies, right?).

“I know you always want to help,” he says. “But I don’t think this one is on you, Archie.”

Jughead’s parents fight sometimes, too. Not all the time; not even most of the time. But more now than they used to. Nobody’s said anything to him, but Jughead’s ears work just fine. Sometimes his dad doesn’t get home from work until well past dark, and when he does, he goes straight for the liquor cabinet without even glancing at them. That's when Jughead takes Jellybean to the Drive-In, or to Pop’s, so she doesn’t have to hear it.

Maybe his parents are gonna get a divorce too. He tries to imagine Mr. and Mrs. Andrews yelling like his parents do, but he can’t picture it somehow. Maybe it’s because he can’t picture Mr. Andrews holding a glass of whiskey the way his dad does.

“But what if they’re fighting because of me?” says Archie.

“They’re not.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because they’re just _not_ , dude. You never do anything wrong. You never cause any trouble. Everybody likes you.”

“You think so?”

“Uh, yeah, dumbass. You always get picked first in gym, don’t you?”

Archie’s face screws up. “I guess. But how do you know that? You skip class every time we have gym.”

Jughead just shrugs. Of course Archie gets picked for sports teams; Archie is nice and normal and likeable, and he can actually kick a ball and make it go where he wants it to, a skill that Jughead thinks he will probably never master. And in his opinion, there’s no point showing up to a class where all he does is embarrass himself.

Archie still spends a lot of time with Jughead, but he has other friends these days, as well. He walks to school with Betty, the girl who lives next door to him, who has a blonde ponytail and reads a lot of books. She’s nice, so nice that it even extends to Jughead. He doesn’t think her and Archie are all that close, though, since Betty doesn’t seem to be able to speak to Archie without turning beet-red and looking like she’s going to pass out.

“My parents fight too,” he says, trying to sound reassuring. “All parents do. It’s just a thing.”

Without thinking, Jughead reaches over and pries Archie’s fingers apart, examining his poor knuckles. They’ve scabbed over by now. Archie fingers curl around Jughead’s a little, just a little, and for some reason, at that moment, Jughead’s heart starts jumping around in his chest, all funny. It feels normal, natural as anything, to pick up Archie’s hand… but it crosses Jughead’s mind, for the first time, that he’s never held a girl’s hand like this.

He’s never really wanted to.

Archie winces at the lightest brush of Jughead’s fingertips against his broken skin.

“That _cannot_ hurt.”

“The garage wall’s a lot tougher than it looks!”

Archie pulls his hand away, and Jughead’s heart sinks a little at the loss of contact – which, again, weird. He shouldn’t really have held Archie’s hand like that in the first place. They’re both guys, and they’re thirteen now; they shouldn’t be doing shit like that anymore. If they weren’t alone, in a secluded corner of the schoolyard where nobody but them ever hangs out, Jughead realises that he might not have done it at all. But when he’s alone with Archie, it’s so easy to forget that the rest of the world exists.

“Go for a pillow next time,” he says, trying to pull himself out of those confusing thoughts.

Archie chews on his lip. Jughead knows that look.

“Dude. This isn’t your fault.”

“But how do you—”

“’Cause it’s just not, okay?” Jughead sighs, then glances over the yard, to the school gates. “Alright, come on. We’re going to Pop’s.”

“We have—”

“Fuck classes, we’re getting milkshakes. Last one to the bike shed is buying.”

And he takes off at a sprint.

“I hate you,” Archie wheezes when he catches up, but that unbearable, miserable look is gone from his eyes, and there’s a grin beginning to play on his lips, even if it’s not fully there yet.

The run has put a flush in his cheeks, like two deft red brushstrokes. Jughead tries his hardest not to stare.

When Jughead is fourteen, his dad gives him a black eye. It’s not exactly the first time he’s gotten a little rough with Jughead – just a few shoves, here and there; no big deal. It’s only ever when he’s drinking, except that lately he’s _always_ drinking, and now Jughead is walking into school with a sign of it on his face.

Jughead isn’t stupid. He knows he won’t be able to pass it off as something he got from running into a lamppost. Archie is in his Tarantino phase, coming to school with a mouthful of cusswords that don’t suit him; he knows what a black eye looks like. When he asks what the hell happened, Jughead shakes his head and says that he got robbed.

“Tell me who,” Archie demands. “Tell me who, I swear to God, Jug. I’ll find them, I’ll fucking—”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll make them choke on their own blood or something equally sickening.” Jughead rolls his eyes as he shoves his backpack into his locker. “Seriously, you need to stop watching those movies.”

“You just don’t understand them.”

“Mmm. If you want to see a real movie, you should watch classic cinema. Nobody will ever top Hitchcock.”

As Archie turns to his own locker, shaking his head in disagreement, Jughead finds himself watching. Eyes tracing his friend’s side profile. Archie might not have hit his real growth spurt yet, but he’s changed. He’s not a little kid anymore. His shoulders are like mountain slopes. He wears his hair a little longer than he used to – still short in the back, but red strands curl across his forehead, and Jughead’s eyes won’t let go of them.

Jughead overheard a girl in chemistry class – Annie Robertson, Jughead never liked her – saying that Archie was getting _cute_. He barely restrained the urge to snap at her, to tell her to shut the fuck up.

“What?” says Archie, glancing across at him, and Jughead looks away quickly.

“Nothin’. Just your weird face.”

Archie shoves him.

“Hey – you can’t hit a wounded man!”

Archie’s grin falls from his lips, and his brown eyes turn serious. Jughead sees Archie’s eyes everywhere these days. Fallen leaves, coffee cups. Which is a problem, because Jughead is starting to drink a lot of coffee.

“Seriously, Jug. Who was it? Who hurt you?”

Jughead pictures the look on his dad’s face: drunken anger twisting features that Jughead fears he is growing into. Everyone says that he has his dad’s nose, lips, hair.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Honestly, dude, I have no idea.”

He never used to be able to lie to Archie, back when they were kids. But they’re not kids anymore, and Jughead has to be smart about this. He has to be smart about a lot of things. He’s older now, and he knows that he wants – and he knows why he can’t have it. Riverdale is a small town. Jughead already sticks out in ways that don’t make his life any easier. He has no desire to become a fully-fledged social pariah, thankyouverymuch.

And it’s okay. Jughead can handle it. There have always been certain sides of himself that he knows not to show to anybody else. Not even Archie.

His dad drinks more and more. Jughead stays out of his way, and stays quiet about the way he thinks about his best friend when he closes his eyes to sleep.

When Archie is fifteen, he busts his knee scoring the winning point in football. He only makes the sidelines as a freshman, but Jughead goes to every game, rain and snow, sitting there beside Archie’s dad on the bleachers until finally, on the last game of the semester, Archie gets onto the field. Jughead and Fred both whoop like the embarrassing family they are, jumping up and down, turning Archie’s cheeks as red as his hair.

Archie scores. He wins the game for the Bulldogs, even though he falls badly on his leg in the process.

The team swamp him as the whistle blows, cheering and screaming and ruffling his hair, and Archie beams like the goddamn sun in the middle of it all, stealing Jughead’s breath right out of his lungs.

(Jughead misses the glint of curiosity in Fred’s eye when he sees the look on Jughead’s face – sees the way he’s looking at Archie.)

There’s an afterparty. Jughead wants Archie to see a doctor straight away – he’s ecstatic but he’s limping all the same – but the team only let the school nurse give him a quick once-over before they’re dragging him off the celebrate.

There’s an afterparty, and it’s fucking awful. Archie is the man of the night. Everyone wants a piece of him. Jughead is hardly a stranger to jealousy where Archie is concerned, but now, now his insides are writhing like they’re full of snakes. Jughead doesn’t do parties, but he goes anyway, because it’s far too easy to picture some cheerleader dragging Archie off into a dark corner; obnoxiously loud music and pretentious small talk be damned.

It happens when they’re on the balcony. Jughead doesn’t actually know whose house this is. After what feels like hours, he manages to steal Archie away from the latest in a long line of jocks who are trying to pretend that he’s their best friend, and pulls him out into the blissfully cool night air.

“Are you sure your knee is okay?” Jughead frowns. He saw that fall – practically _heard_ that fall – and it’s pissing him off that no-one else seems to care that Archie got hurt.

But Archie just gives him an easy smile. “Stop _worryin_ ’, bro. Nurse said it’s fine. You need a drink.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

Archie has been drinking all night. So has everyone else at this party, except for Jughead. (Jughead decided, a few black eyes ago, that he’s never touching a drop of alcohol so long as he lives.)

Archie slings his arm around Jughead’s shoulder. Casual as anything; just something friends do. But then he does the same with the other, so his hands are clasped loosely at the back of Jughead’s neck, and Jughead’s brain begins to short-circuit. Archie is still grinning, his eyes dark and hazy, and _god_ , he’s so fucking pretty when he’s happy. Archie is beautiful, so beautiful, he makes Jughead want to write terrible love poems—

And he makes Jughead scared. Because sometimes he thinks Archie is the only good thing in this whole town, and that terrifies him, because eventually this awful little place is going to chew him up and spit him out, like it does to everybody else.

“You’re not happy.” Archie’s head tilts. “Why aren’t you happy for me, Jug?” His smile slips, and it absolutely breaks Jughead’s heart. “You’re my – you’re my _best friend_. I thought you’d be proud of me. Ev’ryone else is. But not you.”

“I am,” Jughead breathes. “I _am_ proud of you, Arch. You have no idea.”

Archie smiles again, and Jughead’s chest _aches_ —

And all at once he can’t stand it anymore.

Archie is drunk. Jughead isn’t, but Archie is a drug all by himself. His head is spinning and they’re so goddamn _close._ Archie is right there in front of him, like he’s _meant_ to be there, like they were made to fit together like this. Jughead has been wondering what it’s like to kiss Archie for more years than he can even remember. It feels like the most natural thing in the world to lean forwards and press their lips together.

For a second – the longest second of Jughead’s short life – it is wonderful.

And then Archie jerks back.

“What the _fuck_?”

Every muscle in Jughead’s body freezes up. The look on Archie's face—

Jughead doesn’t remember moving. The next thing he knows, he’s out of there, pushing past all the bodies, stupid drunk teenagers, to get to the door.

When Jughead is fifteen, he fights with his dad for the last time before leaving home.

Jughead is being an asshole lately, and he’s acutely aware of it. He’s snapping at his dad more and more. Hell, he’s snapping at just about everyone, because it’s broken, everything’s broken, everything that mattered, and it’s all his own fault.

It crescendos into a two-hour screaming match, which ends with his dad knocking him to the ground and kicking him in the ribs. As soon as the blow lands, Jughead sees regret wash out the anger in his father's eyes. But enough is enough, and Jughead is done. He hurts like hell, but gets up and gets out, shoving his things into a bag and leaving without bothering to listen to the apologies.

The ribs on his right side hurt so bad that Jughead spends the next two weeks practically inhaling Tylenol. Even after, after the bruising has mottled from cornflower blue to an ugly, faded yellow, the colour of sickness, they’re still agonisingly sore. The twinges never really seem to go away, but Jughead doesn’t know how much of that is in his head.

Archie doesn’t know about it. Archie doesn’t spend time with him anymore. They don’t meet at Pop’s for milkshakes. They don’t ride their bikes together, tracing aimless circles around streets they know too well. They don’t hang out in Archie’s garage, messing around on the drums or playing video games until the early hours of the morning. They still text occasionally, but the messages are stilted and awkward, which Jughead thinks is probably worse than not talking at all. They’d planned to go away on a camping trip, before Jughead ruined everything, but Archie, predictably, bailed.

That summer, Jughead moves into the Drive-In. He sleeps on his left side. He eats instant noodles and popcorn, and spends the long days reading Stephen King novels in the town library until they close each night. He smokes three cigarettes and hates them, but he keeps the lighter in his pocket because he finds that he likes to watch it flick. Jughead writes, even though he doesn’t have anyone to write to. At first, he tries to write about Archie, but the words come out wrong, so Jughead writes about Jason Blossom instead. He writes about mystery and murder, painting his small town in neon colours, sharpening all the places and characters, taking control of the narrative to keep himself from going out of his mind in this place.

That summer, Jughead discovers that he _can_ be a person without Archie Andrews. He’s just a fucking miserable one.

When Jughead is sixteen, Cheryl Blossom splits his lip open in the school cafeteria.

The pain is strangely good: a bright burst of colour and public humiliation, snapping Jughead out of the haze he’s sunk into over the past few days. Everything has been getting blurrier at the edges for a while now, everything feeling less real, and when they told him about his dad's confession, Jughead was almost sure he had slipped into a dream without realising. Into some strange other reality where his dad was a murderer. For the first time in his life, he has started to wonder what it would feel like to drink until his lungs burn.

Archie drags Cheryl off of him. It’s kind of funny, the way she hammers at his chest like her dainty little fists could do him any damage, but his valiant white knight comes to the rescue nonetheless. And then Archie is waiting outside the principal’s office again, like he did all those years ago, as Jughead answers very different kinds of questions, this time.

A lot of things can change in a few months, apparently. Archie and him are friends now. Or so they seem to be. Jughead is actually living with him, and Archie doesn’t seem uncomfortable with Jughead sleeping on his floor, which is something, he supposes. At the very least, Archie isn’t a raging homophobe. Not that Jughead really thought he would be; Archie has always been fine with Kevin, after all, and any kind of bigotry would be massively out of character for him anyway. But he is a jock, and Jughead’s head has been going to some pretty dark places lately, even for him.

After the interrogation is over, Archie steers him to the bathroom, props him against the sink like a ragdoll, and presses a wet cloth to his lip where the blood has crusted. The sudden quiet of the empty room snaps Jughead out of the semi-dissociative daze. Suddenly, despite everything, he is intensely aware of the soft press of Archie’s hands as they carefully clean him up.

“Guess this is the first time in a while that we’ve been in a room alone together, huh?”

It took a literal murder to bring him and Archie back together, and it's not the same as it was before. Now, they're always plotting or scheming, trying to solve this mystery or that, and Betty and Veronica are there too. They might be friends again, sometimes the _difference_ of it hits Jughead with a wave of melancholy. It will never be the same as it was, all those years he spent with Archie, with an air of understanding between them that nobody else would ever know. They've grown up, and that's gone, and it's never coming back.

Archie’s expression changes. “Jughead… I…”

“It’s okay, dude. I never did get a chance to say sorry.”

Now, though, Archie is frowning. “You don’t have to apologise. If anything, I’m the one who should be saying sorry. The way I reacted… It just took me by surprise, Jug, and, and, I didn’t get a proper chance to think—”

But Jughead can’t deal with this right now. Not now, not with the weight of his father’s terrible crime on his shoulders, with his whole world tipped upside down. He can’t handle Archie saying _sorry_ . _Sorry I don’t like you back. Sorry I don’t reciprocate your pathetic little crush – but I could never want someone like you, never in a million years._

So he bats away Archie’s nursing hand, maybe harder than he needs to.

“I know,” he says. “I know you didn’t mean anything cruel by it. You haven’t got a cruel bone in your body, Archie, Jesus, I _know_ that, okay? Can we just… forget it ever happened? You were drunk and I – I wasn’t thinking right. That’s all it was. Okay?”

Jughead can lie to Archie so well these days, just like he can lie to everyone else.

Archie’s brows draw together in a look that Jughead can’t read. He stares at Jughead for a long moment, his hand falling to his side. Then, eventually, he nods.

“O-okay. Yeah. Let’s forget about it.”

Jughead pushes himself away from the sink and heads for the door. He dreads what he’s going to face on the other side – a wall of contempt from the entire fucking town, probably – but he can’t stand being in that room a second longer, even if Archie might be the only person in the world who’s rooting for him. He can’t stand Archie’s soft, sympathetic hands, treating him like he’s something breakable. Like something worth saving from breaking.

“You’re still bleeding,” says Archie, holding the cloth. The curl of his fingers around the fabric looks a little sad, somehow.

Jughead’s smile is sad, too. “Not like I haven’t had worse,” he says, and this time he isn’t lying.

When Archie is sixteen, he puts his hand through a frozen lake to save Cheryl Blossom’s life.

It happens so quickly that Jughead doesn’t have time to react. He's a thinker, not an actor; always has been, always will be, and in the horror of the moment, he freezes up like the ice beneath their feet. But Archie – Archie acts so quickly he’s practically a blur. Red splatters across the white, bright and terrible, as he shatters the surface of the lake with his bare fist.

There is no avoiding the emergency room, this time. Jughead goes with him, and after the panic is over and Cheryl is rushed away, Jughead stays at Archie's side. He breaks his "no small talk" rule, rambling about everything and nothing as he tries to distract Archie, but he doesn't know if it accomplishes much; Archie is putting on a brave face, but Jughead can see the grim, pained set of his mouth beneath it all, making him feel useless all over again.

"You'll need someone to help change these," says the nurse, after they're done with the x-ray, and Archie's poor fingers are being tightly wrapped up.

Fred would do it, of course. But since Jughead is still staying at Archie's (at least until child services exile him to the Southside like some sort of banished prince) and he's not busy all day with a job like Fred - why not?

The first time he unwraps the hospital bindings, Jughead winces in sympathy. They are in the bathroom for convenience, and Jughead is sitting up on the counter to give himself better access, his legs swinging below.

“You need to be more careful with your heroics, Superman. You might have the heart of gold, but you’re not indestructible.”

Jughead is being as careful as he can, but Archie can’t quite hold back his flinch when he applies the antiseptic.

“Yeah, well, I’m kind of hoping I never need to do anything like that ever – _ah_ – again.”

“Yeah?” Jughead glances up through dark strands of hair. His beanie is in the dryer (he might be unhealthily attached to the thing but he’s not unhygienic, okay?) and he’s fully aware that his hair is a mess, falling into his eyes in a black tangle. “I don’t know, I think it kind of suits you. It’s certainly made you the most eligible bachelor in town.” Jughead wraps the fresh bandages over, under, over. Figures-of-eight. Every time he holds Archie’s hand, it’s just like the first. “You could get any girl at school, you know. Anyone you wanted.”

“Jug…”

“What about Veronica? She’s pretty. More than pretty; she’s beautiful.”

“Jughead.”

“Actually, no, I take it back – not _any_ girl. Sorry, Andrews, but that one is still way out of your lea—”

But then Jughead finds his words cut off, as suddenly Archie’s broken hand is not in his anymore. Suddenly, there’s a different hand at the back of his neck, pulling him down, and there’s no space between them anymore, because Archie is kissing him.

_Archie_ is kissing _him_.

Jughead is too shocked to really react. All he knows is warm lips against his own, the hand sliding up to curl in his hair, _oh_. It’s overwhelming, it’s everything he’s wanted for so long, it’s – it’s—

Jughead rips himself away. Or, really, he shoves Archie away because there’s nowhere for him to go, pressed against the bathroom tiles as he is. Archie yelps as Jughead knocks his sore, half-bandaged hand, but Jughead doesn’t stop. He tears away from the counter, and it’s only Archie catching his arm that stops him from bolting straight out of the door.

“Jughead—”

“I never thought you were perfect, Archie,” Jughead snarls, “But I never thought you were this much of a fucking _asshole_.”

It hurts, hurts like a shard of that frozen lake has sluiced right through his chest, because Archie _has_ to be mocking him. That’s the only option here, right? It makes no sense, because Archie wouldn’t do that, Archie isn’t cruel like that - but he can't have seriously kissed Jughead, either. Archie could never want Jughead, not the way Jughead wants him. This thing, these feelings, they’re one-sided, and Jughead has made his goddamnned _peace_ with that. It makes no _sense_.

It certainly looks like genuine surprise when Archie’s face creases. “What? No, wait – aw, shit, I did that wrong. But - Jughead, _please_ don’t run away again! You _always_ run away from this, you always do, and I can't…” Archie stops abruptly. “I did that wrong,” he says again, slower. “But. Let me explain?”

His words make Jughead pause. _Has_ he been running out on Archie? He never really thought about it like that, but now, he realises that it is always him who cuts these conversations short. At the house party, and in the school. He leaves because he assumes he knows what Archie is going to say… but he never thought that Archie would ever kiss him.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m listening.”

Archie leans back against the sink, looking more relieved than he did when they found out Jughead’s dad didn’t kill Jason Blossom. He blows out a long breath. “Okay,” he says. “O _kay_ . Shit. I’m not good with words, you know? Not like you are. But… okay, firstly, Jug, I’m so, _so_ sorry for how I reacted at that party. All those months ago. It just – it caught me off guard. I swear, I never meant to be an asshole to you, and if you’re – you know, gay, then that’s totally fine. Totally cool.”

Jughead’s chest is so tight that he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t realise if he had a heart attack, right now. “Okay. Is that all? Because if it is, then I forgive you or whatever, and—”

“No!” says Archie quickly. “No. That’s _not_ all. Listen, Jug. This summer… when we weren’t talking… it sucked, okay? Like, it _really_ sucked. I… I didn’t know what to do with myself. You were just _gone_ , and it was so, _so_ unbelievably shitty. But... fuck, Jug. It was more than that. Maybe it sounds crazy, but it felt like I was missing an arm or a leg or something. Do you get what I mean?”

Jughead thinks back to those long, lonely nights at the Drive-In, when he never felt whole.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “Yeah, I do.” But he never thought that their friendship-breakup might have affected Archie in the same way.

Archie pushes his good hand through his hair. “I just never really had to think about it, you know? About me and you. ’Cause you were always just _there_. But then suddenly you weren’t, and I… I’ve been thinking, Jug. I’ve _been_ thinking, like. A lot.”

“Hey,” says Jughead jokingly, because he’s a timebomb of nervous energy right now and he doesn’t know what else to do, “Don’t want to do too much of that. You’ll hurt your brain.”

But Archie doesn’t laugh. Jughead realises that Archie isn’t looking at his eyes – he’s looking at his _lips_. A shiver goes through him, right to the bone.

“When we were in the school bathroom,” says Archie, so quietly, “You said it didn’t mean anything. That kiss.” Archie glances up at him with those eyes – those fucking _eyes_. “You said it was just ‘cause you weren’t thinking right. Be honest with me, Jug, please. Was that the truth?”

Jughead feels the last of his resolve crumble.

“I just don’t get it,” he whispers. “You could have anyone, Andrews. Anyone in this whole goddamn town. Anyone you wanted. Why the fuck would you want me?”

It’s true, it’s true, Jughead _knows_ it. Archie is _good_. Classic good, storybook good, the kind of hero that Jughead says he never falls for but then always does. He brings out the best in other people, and so he draws them all in, like moths to a flame. He’s not perfect – he can be short-sighted, and insufferably idealistic, sometimes to the point of being naïve, but he’s still _whole_ in a way that few people are. In a way that makes other people feel whole too.

Jughead has always felt it. Archie makes him feel clean, and safe, and unbroken, like he is six years old again, holding hands in the emergency room, and the terrible things never happened, and everything is going to be okay.

Everybody wants Archie.

But nobody wants Jughead. Not really. His mom, his dad, Betty, Veronica – they want parts of him, sure. The useful parts, mostly: his brain, his intellect, and hell, sometimes even his company. But they roll their eyes at the other sides of him. His teachers have written elegies to his wasted potential. Nobody has ever wanted Jughead in his entirety, with all his oddities and weird boundaries and snark.

Except…

Except Archie is looking at him in a way that makes Jughead feel as if he has been stripped naked. He's so close now, his breath ghosting across Jughead’s own lips, and he isn’t backing away, even though he must see _everything_.

“But I don’t want just anyone,” Archie replies. “I want... look, Jug, you came to all my football games, even when I wasn't on the field. And then you came to the afterparties, even though you hated them. You did that for me. I didn't ask you to, but you did. And you're just about the only person in the world who knows how to make me feel better when I feel like trash. You're the only one who's genuinely been _there_ for me, every time I was down. Every time I needed picking back up." _Oh_ , is all Jughead can think, _oh_ , because he never saw it like that. This isn't how he thought it would go. Has he been in a different kind of story, all along? "And, I don't even know. I just like being with you, Jughead. It's so easy, with you. It's always been so easy."

The feeling of his world turning upside down - everything he thought he knew for certain being uprooted - is becoming far too common an occurrence in Jughead’s life, lately.

“I didn’t know you felt like that," he says. "I didn’t think you could…”

“What - like you?” Archie shakes his head. “I mean, even if I didn’t _like you_ like you, you’re still my best friend, Jug. Did you think I’ve spent my whole life following you around because I hated you, or something?”

_Yes. No._ Jughead swallows around the lump in his throat. “I don’t know what I thought. I guess… oh, fuck, this is all too confusing. Jesus H _Christ_ , Andrews. If we’re both on the same page, can I just fucking kiss you already? I think I’ve waited long enough.”

At last, Archie breaks into a laugh, which is the only thing that Jughead can make sense of right now. Archie moves slowly, this time; carefully, hesitantly, not like a starving man lunging for a meal. It’s not their first kiss, not even their second, but it’s the first one that Jughead actually gets to actually savour.

And so Jughead lets go of it all - all his fears and insecurities and misconceptions that he didn't even know were misconceptions until now. He lets himself fall into the taste of Archie's lips. The shape of his tongue. The way Archie’s nose tucks in against his own, like it was made to go there.

They don’t say anything to Fred, but apparently it’s written all over their faces, because a grin splits his face when he sees them sitting side-by-side on the couch.

“You boys finally worked it out then, huh? Only took you sixteen years.”

For once, Jughead is out of words. He simply rests his head on Archie's shoulder, and cradles Archie's bandaged hand softly in his own.


End file.
